Judging from the number of reading lists returned by googling “pandemic books,” many readers aren’t looking for escapism during COVID.

A pandemic read was not my object on my first trip into the Harold Washington Library Center after it reopened a few weeks ago. Browsing in the Popular Library on the first floor, I noticed a couple of novels by Minette Walters, a Brit known as the queen of psychological mystery. Not until I returned home did I discover that the books aren’t mysteries but works of historical fiction about the Black Death’s rampage of Southern England’s Dorseteshire (as it was then spelled) in 1348–49.

The Last Hours was published in 2018 and its sequel, The Turn of Midnight, in 2019, before COVID, so Walters couldn’t have known how timely her foray into historical fiction would be. Modern medicine aside, it’s striking to see the parallels between 672 years ago and today.

• Both the Black Death, now known as the plague, and COVID were new, invisible, and mysterious. They both arrived, spread, and killed quickly. Decisions about what to do had to be made hurriedly.

• They weren’t confined to a small region. COVID has reached every continent but Antarctica. The plague spread from Asia to Europe, where it wiped out an estimated 50 percent of the population.

• They were spread by travel from Asia. The plague moved along the Silk Road, the land and sea network connecting China and the Far East with Europe. COVID originated in China and was carried from there by travelers.

• No one was invulnerable. The diseases killed rich and poor, the powerful and the lowest strata.

• Neither disease affected everyone the same way. Walters’s characters attempt to understand why the serf Gyles Startout survived when all his traveling companies died. COVID has affected people in vastly different ways ranging from no symptoms to death.

• Neither disease had an effective treatment.

• There was an expectation that life would not return to what it had been. “In twelve days, the world had changed beyond all recognition,” Sir Richard observes in The Last Hours before he dies.

• Quarantines were used and proven to work to keep people safe. In Walters’s story, Lady Anne, a woman ahead of her time, barricades the people of Develish in a manor house surrounded by a moat. Anyone exposed to the outside world, like Gyles Startout, must quarantine for 14 days before being allowed in. Everyone within the manor house survives, while other Dorseteshire towns are decimated.

• Superstitious people in the Middle Ages believed the plague was a punishment from God, and religious people thought that God would protect them. Evangelicals said the same thing about packing people into churches during COVID.

• Walters’s hibernating characters wonder how people would know when it’s safe to come out. Phased reopenings during COVID address the same question.

• People seek to know how other places have fared. A delegation of brave serfs leaves Develish to find out. The news comes to us today, with the same purpose: to inform decision making.

When someone in my book group suggested reading a novel about a pandemic, the rest of us demurred, saying that we were hearing enough about a depressing disease in real life. The Last Hours and The Turn of Midnight are not depressing, however. They offer inspiring examples of people whose enlightened thinking and courageous actions ensured the survival of those who listened to them. There lies a lesson for us about listening to Anthony Fauci instead of Donald Trump.

*****

ANTI-TRUMP COMMENTS: 122ND IN AN ONGOING SERIES

“Trump’s nihilistic approach to the worst crisis of our time, which now includes pretending the virus doesn’t exist other than as a vehicle to demonize his enemies, is short-circuiting the wiring inside the heads of his Red Hat fanboys, who are now witnessing their own people succumbing to the virus and trying to somehow square this brutal reality with the “everything’s fine!” attitude coming from their addled messiah. No wonder they’re losing their shpadoinkle — again, facts and Trump-fiction are colliding in their heads and they’re powerless to recalibrate their bullshit detectors.”
— Bob Cesca, Salon

Each day Trump hits the bottom of nonsense and  foolery.

He now takes advice from the likes of  Chuck Woolery,

So Much to Love about 618 5th Street – a new listing in Wilmette

This delightful Wilmette home for sale is for someone who’s looking to buy a newer home that is move-in-ready.

The home is in a prime east Wilmette location near Gillson park and beach, CTA, and a short walk to Wilmette’s hopping downtown area.

Address:  618 5th St., Wilmette IL

Built: 2007

Bedrooms: 3 + 1 in the basement

Baths: 3 full, 1 ½ bath (includes full basement bath)

Square footage of home: 2,932

Square footage of lot: 5,500

Elementary School: Central School

High School:  New Trier High School

Price: $1,195,000

Taxes: $14,677

Some highlights: 

• A chef’s kitchen with Wood Mode cabinets, high-end appliances, and a pantry closet.
• Functional open floor plan.
• Separate dining room.
• Family room adjacent to kitchen with views of back yard.
• Master bedroom with fireplace and private balcony.
• Two more bedrooms with Jack-and-Jill bathroom
• 2nd floor laundry
• Outdoor patio, fireplace, and shower to wash sand off from the beach!

Perfect if you’re looking for a comfortable cozy home with a manageable lot!

To see photos, floor plans, map, room sizes,  and more, please see:

618 5th St., Wilmette, IL

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Margaret Goss is a full-time real estate broker since 1998 working for Baird and Warner in the North Shore communities of Winnetka, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Glencoe, Northfield, Glenview, and Evanston.

She can be reached at:

Phone:  847-977-6024

Email:  [email protected]

See her full BIOGRAPHY

As if we didn’t have enough evidence that End Days are here, what with the United States of America becoming a Third World country closed off from the rest of the world (albeit a “Great” Third World country), brothers fighting against brothers via sharp Facebook ripostes, potty-mouthed Karens abusing store clerks wholesale, and a nasty virus that has brought us all to our knees  – try this news on for size: the Vienna Beef Factory Store at Damen and Fullerton has closed its doors on July 1.

One hundred and twenty-seven years after Austrian-Hungarian immigrants Emil Reichl and Sam Ladany sold their snappy, all-beef hot dogs from a street cart at the 1893 World’s Fair, officially naming their fledgling company Vienna Beef, the store is closed.  Hell, the store itself has been there 50 years.

With it, Hot Dog University, which taught many new hot dog stand entrepreneurs how to start their own hot dog business with fine instruction from Professor Mark Reitman, has also closed. With hot dogs, there is no distance learning.

And now, I kick myself for not having taken Mr. Reitman up on his offer a few years back to front me tuition for taking the class as part of the edification of Hot Dog Diaries.

At the time, I was considering getting a cart and selling Vienna Beef char dogs on Myrtle Beach, under a tiki umbrella that I went so far as to price out at Amazon. I’d even pair the beautifully charred dogs with Tiki Punch for a great sweet and savory treat.

Vienna Beef would be my import partner – I’d get the neon green relish, the dogs, the buns, the celery salt, and whatever else I could from them. In time, I’d be inducted into the Vienna Beef Hall of Fame, like Franksville Station. I could almost see Mr. Reitman beaming like Mr. Chips at the ceremony.

I even had a name: Tiki Hut Dogs. Get it?

But Myrtle Beach is closed, and now, so is the Vienna Beef Store and Factory.

What will be going up in its place? A golf driving range named Drive Shack. I have nothing against golf. I played on my high school and college team all four years, although the Elmhurst College Blue Jays were never much of a threat to the boys from Augustana.

In college, the coach reserved a bucket of balls for you at the local driving range every day, and you’d have to sign for them and hit them or explain why you missed it. We’re talking a large bucket, too. College was tough.

I gave up my Tiki Hut Dog dream, I guess. I retired to Michigan, which also has some fine beaches and plenty of people that might enjoy a Chicago char dog as part of their summer weekend in New Buffalo. But I kind of dreaded the dog and pony show you’d have to go through to appease local City Councils for approval, plus the start-up costs themselves would not be insignificant.

Not to mention having to get up in the morning to chop onions and then schlepping your stuff over to set up on a beach without having the local food trucks get irate with me.  I’m a peace-loving man. Part of that is being a quiet-loving man, too.

There is too much noise out there now. Everybody seems upset, and everybody seems completely on their own, adrift in a restaurant-less sea.

When Golden Weenie winner Bill Murphy closed his doors a few years ago, I nearly wept. I knew I had lost something. Life is a casting off, as Linda Loman tells Willy in “Death of a Salesman.” But you never realize how true that is until you retire and see your favorite places close down and the walls kind of close in around you.

Bright spot: You can still go to the Vienna Beef Factory in Bridgeview – not the same.

Or you can order a hot dog at the new driving range. It’s described as “upscale,” so good luck.